> "60% of Alaska voters voted for a Republican, but thanks to a convoluted process and ballot exhaustion — which disenfranchises voters — a Democrat 'won,'"
This is why we can't have nice things. I can see why people would find the result counter-intuitive.
This is the new Republican strategy. If you lose an election, claim it's illegitimate. Details don't matter, there must have been some kind of fraud or the Republican would have won. Ipso facto. Quod erat demonstrandum. Cave canem.
"One critique of ranked choice is that the winner in the end might depend on who initially comes in last. What if Ms. Palin had been eliminated first? Would most of her supporters have found Mr. Begich an acceptable second choice, at least compared with Ms. Peltola? If so, the second round might have catapulted him to a final GOP victory.
The state Division of Elections says it doesn’t have data on the second choices of the voters who picked Ms. Palin first. It isn’t sure whether such data will ever be collated and posted. The point is that ranked-choice voting encourages such strategic gamesmanship.
Imagine you’re an Alaska Democrat. The best scenario for your candidate, Ms. Peltola, might be a final showdown against Ms. Palin, meaning you want Mr. Begich to be eliminated. You might therefore conclude that the best use for your own ballot is to rank Ms. Palin first, ahead of the Democrat you actually want to win. Helping to knock out Mr. Begich early might improve Ms. Peltola’s overall odds.
At this point our head starts to hurt. Ranked-choice elections are sometimes referred to as instant-runoff voting. What was the problem with regular, old-fashioned runoffs? No election method is perfect, and choosing candidates in partisan primaries has produced its share of turkeys and loons. But there’s something clarifying about a head-to-head argument between two candidates with different visions. Whoever wins has a mandate that isn’t cobbled together from second or third rankings."
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 17.7 ms ] threadThis is why we can't have nice things. I can see why people would find the result counter-intuitive.
"One critique of ranked choice is that the winner in the end might depend on who initially comes in last. What if Ms. Palin had been eliminated first? Would most of her supporters have found Mr. Begich an acceptable second choice, at least compared with Ms. Peltola? If so, the second round might have catapulted him to a final GOP victory.
The state Division of Elections says it doesn’t have data on the second choices of the voters who picked Ms. Palin first. It isn’t sure whether such data will ever be collated and posted. The point is that ranked-choice voting encourages such strategic gamesmanship.
Imagine you’re an Alaska Democrat. The best scenario for your candidate, Ms. Peltola, might be a final showdown against Ms. Palin, meaning you want Mr. Begich to be eliminated. You might therefore conclude that the best use for your own ballot is to rank Ms. Palin first, ahead of the Democrat you actually want to win. Helping to knock out Mr. Begich early might improve Ms. Peltola’s overall odds.
At this point our head starts to hurt. Ranked-choice elections are sometimes referred to as instant-runoff voting. What was the problem with regular, old-fashioned runoffs? No election method is perfect, and choosing candidates in partisan primaries has produced its share of turkeys and loons. But there’s something clarifying about a head-to-head argument between two candidates with different visions. Whoever wins has a mandate that isn’t cobbled together from second or third rankings."